Does the average XIV player know how to play their jobs?

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

Im hardcore at being average as a gamer.

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Similarly, I put "casual" and "hardcore" on my adventure plate. :p

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Originally Posted by PikoAliapoh

Imagine it being a game that people play to chill and have fun, not some kind of competitive sport that everyone needs to be perfect at. There are literally kids playing this game, and your /s comment about "parse heads" cuts both ways. They don't need people chiding them to git gud and improve their parse either.

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You've just proven Semi right, you do realize that?
Because Semi never said anything about "git gud", "chiding" or "improve their parse" - let alone anything about "competetive sports" that everyone needs to be perfect at".

This is the exact extreme reaction that some people show. It's never about being "perfect", you're making this up just so you have a reason to get as hyperdefensive as Semi says. "Could" improve implies an option. An option you can always not take and say so. No reason to accuse everyone that gives you that option of wanting you to be perfect, ruining the fun and playing it like competetive sports.

Also, chill and having fun goes both ways. Something people always forget when they bring this argument.
So someone wants to chill and have fun by watching netflix on their 2nd monitor and dying constantly.
So what if I want to chill and have fun by not having to babysit someone through every single mechanic and still ending up scraping them off the floor all the time?

Oh, wait.
This is an extreme example and doesn't reflect reality because it never happens anyway?
Well, so is saying someone expects others to be "perfect" and play "competetive sports" just because they suggest taking a pointer if they're getting out-dpsed on NIN by an AST.

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Originally Posted by PikoAliapoh

Imagine it being a game that people play to chill and have fun, not some kind of competitive sport that everyone needs to be perfect at. There are literally kids playing this game, and your /s comment about "parse heads" cuts both ways. They don't need people chiding them to git gud and improve their parse either.

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See what I mean?

We all have our own idea of what is average though. I'm a pessimist so I'd personally say no, they don't but obviously someone will be more optimistic will counter my statement. Bad players tend to stick out more in my mind though and seem much more common the more time I spend in the game so I'll stick to my opinion of No, they don't.

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Originally Posted by PikoAliapoh

Imagine it being a game that people play to chill and have fun, not some kind of competitive sport that everyone needs to be perfect at. There are literally kids playing this game, and your /s comment about "parse heads" cuts both ways. They don't need people chiding them to git gud and improve their parse either.

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That kind of attitude becomes a problem when it encounters other people. The same is true of people with the opposite. We all have certain expectations when entering a duty, and when those expectations clash it can cause friction.

For me personally I try to be quite "live and let live", but there are times, for example, where I see someone spamming one single target attack against a mob pack in an endgame dungeon and get a little frustrated.
I imagine I'd be similarly frustrated if I was expected to perfectly speed-run a dungeon on my first play through.

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Originally Posted by PikoAliapoh

Imagine it being a game that people play to chill and have fun, not some kind of competitive sport that everyone needs to be perfect at. There are literally kids playing this game, and your /s comment about "parse heads" cuts both ways. They don't need people chiding them to git gud and improve their parse either.

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There is a huge difference of being perfect vs. doing basic combos and pressing a gcd every 2-2.5 seconds. These type of threads are aimed at those players who don't do that, which is surprisingly common in this game.

I would hope someone playing the game to chill would, you know actually try to play the game. Unless your telling me that using skills on CD is optimization. To me that is the definition of the bare minimum of playing.

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Originally Posted by Yeol

It was in one of the live letters leading to a new expansion (I honestly can't remember which one). Yoshi-P was using his hand to demonstrate the gap. He placed one hand at the top, and one at the bottom with a gap between them. Then he raised his lower hand closer to the top. Saying they want to reduce the gap by bringing the bottom up.

It was something that caught my attention even though they didn't talk about it in detail. It made me wonder "How will they do this?"

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I believe I found it from one leading up to Stormblood. "Current Issues" from https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...286-13-2017%29

But what we saw throughout Stormblood only partially demonstrated this sort of change. The gauges were intended to help people track their rotation, so that they could still be complicated but more obvious to people who don't look at status effects (let's not forget the default location for these is the top-right of the screen where I did not see them for over a year).

The upgrading of actions, reduction of clunky and useless abilities and Role Actions as well, but these were changes players wanted anyway that were obviously needed.

In the post-Stormblood patches, there are references to making things easier to manage, but I still don't think they really meant it in the way they did in Shadowbringers. Leading up to Shadowbringers, they said how some jobs had complicated rotations that were not fun even at max level (Machinist) but you can see all the explanations for 5.0 changes here.

As a fairly newcomer to this game, yes I am average, don't think I'll be ever more then that. But I don't aspire to be more, not for the time being at least. I do however never go into a duty unprepared, I watch guides, from several perspectives, I learn my routine, but watching guides and hitting dummies isn't the same as actual standing there when the push comes to shove. And I always give fair warning, that I am new to the duty at hand.

Does that make me an average or above average player. I don't know and tbh, I don't care.

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Originally Posted by Antharaes

As a fairly newcomer to this game, yes I am average, don't think I'll be ever more then that. But I don't aspire to be more, not for the time being at least. I do however never go into a duty unprepared, I watch guides, from several perspectives, I learn my routine, but watching guides and hitting dummies isn't the same as actual standing there when the push comes to shove. And I always give fair warning, that I am new to the duty at hand.

Does that make me an average or above average player. I don't know and tbh, I don't care.

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I'd say above average honestly.
I don't ever expect anyone to watch a guide for duties that are not endgame. For Extreme and above, yes, I do expect it past a certain time after release unless the party is specifically tagged as blind prog/ no guide necessary. So for all DF stuff, going in blind is perfectly fine and can be a lot of fun.

Watching guides for your rotation and practicing it definitely puts you above average, same as giving a warning. You're putting in more effort than I'd expect from someone in DF and are considerate enough to let people know in advance that you may struggle on top of that. You could be an absolutely terrible player, I'd take you into any DF duty anytime for that attitude alone.

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Originally Posted by PikoAliapoh

Imagine it being a game that people play to chill and have fun, not some kind of competitive sport that everyone needs to be perfect at. There are literally kids playing this game, and your /s comment about "parse heads" cuts both ways. They don't need people chiding them to git gud and improve their parse either.

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I have never seen anyone bite a hook so quickly in my life. Literally next comment.

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Originally Posted by Antharaes

As a fairly newcomer to this game, yes I am average, don't think I'll be ever more then that. But I don't aspire to be more, not for the time being at least. I do however never go into a duty unprepared, I watch guides, from several perspectives, I learn my routine, but watching guides and hitting dummies isn't the same as actual standing there when the push comes to shove. And I always give fair warning, that I am new to the duty at hand.

Does that make me an average or above average player. I don't know and tbh, I don't care.

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The fact that you do any research outside of the game at all makes you above average.

Around Stormblood and SHB a lot of jobs change which increases their complexity or just opens new gameplay flow and players are expected to use it because it's superior and the game will be designed around that. If you screw up a dungeon mechanic you are more likely to die in EW (or SHB?) than in anything prior to Stormblood. Yet the game doesn't really explicitly pushes those changes nor require it from you (stories of missing job stones, freecure WHM fishing even in EW). And when they are trying to add full solo player experience the gap will only widen / there will be more some sort of a conflict - the instance requirements will be lower and lower which can lead to more groups with players not able to handle the mechanics and gameplay in general or just push them into moving away from multiplayer to solo trust system that will just give the player free rez each time, an NPC to follow that will always do mechanics correctly, heals if player-healer can't keep up or tank the boss when player-tank can't - and never tell the player what went wrong, what could be done better on a basic level. Right now if you want some even basic explanation on how a new quirky mechanic works you have to go watch Mizteq video and probably rewind it a few times. Not to mention that when doing the daily roulette you may get an instance you have long forgotten but is full of mechanics because it's a more recent expansion - Paglth'an last boss was quite lethal in my runs in early Endwalker and there was more than it ;)

In short, the skill required goes up, but the game doesn't bother with helping with it. No instance journal, no mechanics recap, no proper job requirements or feedback about basic button usage in modern, not-ARR content.

Put more content where it doesn't require many people but still requires skill to clear it. So you justify repetition and it has an easy way to organize, problem introduced by this would be people complaining about the grindy nature of such and rewards to be at least close or on par with raid gear.

A sin commited by V&C dungeons is not being to gear through it.

in depth rotation guide could work like ghosts in racing games to beat your current best score you could compete with your ghost wol to improve in theory, and in depth mechanic training.
Most learning is on the fly learning instead of hand holding and in turn is really slow, most videos don't equate to gameplay and are essentially useless.

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Originally Posted by Sigma5

in depth rotation guide could work like ghosts in racing games to beat your current best score you could have your ghost wol to try and beat to get better could work in theory, and in depth mechanic training.
Most learning is on the fly learning instead of hand holding and in turn is really slow, most videos don't equate to gameplay and are essentially useless.

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You know, that's not a bad idea.

Set it up similar to the SSS dummy but add some mechanics you have to dodge or get damage downs. Could use the existing hall of novice area as assets in it's creation.

Sync gear to an even level and have a ranking board like PotD for each class. Have some sort of seasonal award like the PvP rankings.

Let me take a different angle here. There are things in my life that I'm both 1. not good at, and 2. I don't have any desire to improve at them. Bowling is one of them. I'm not a great bowler. If I get a strike, it's much more likely that luck guided my ball there than skill. I'm also okay with being a crappy bowler. Most of my friends score higher than me, some of them are around as bad as me. I go to socialize and have fun; my goal isn't to up my bowling game or become a star. The last time one of my friends offered to give some pointers, I told him it's okay. That's not my goal here, but thanks for the offer. I suppose it's more socially acceptable in this instance that a friendly bowling game isn't a cooperative thing like FF14, but minor details.

Now let's take a hypothetical. What if that weren't my approach to bowling? What if, instead, every time we bowled I went on a dramatic rant about the visibility of the scoreboard, and how my score is NOBODY's business? What if I constantly shot a stink eye at the bowling league over in the next lane, muttering about "elitism" anytime one of them grabbed a ball? What if, when I see someone use the gutter bumpers, I stood up, pointed, and with a smug air of superiority shouted, "CHEATER! Look someone's CHEATING! Their score doesn't COUNT because they didn't do it LEGITIMATELY. *I* don't use CHEATER things like that to get MY score."

If you see someone behaving like that, what would you assume is going on in their heads? Do you think, "wow, what a chill and well-adjusted person who just wants to enjoy a casual game?". Because I don't.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Let me take a different angle here. There are things in my life that I'm both 1. not good at, and 2. I don't have any desire to improve at them. Bowling is one of them. I'm not a great bowler. If I get a strike, it's much more likely that luck guided my ball there than skill. I'm also okay with being a crappy bowler. Most of my friends score higher than me, some of them are around as bad as me. I go to socialize and have fun; my goal isn't to up my bowling game or become a star. The last time one of my friends offered to give some pointers, I told him it's okay. That's not my goal here, but thanks for the offer. I suppose it's more socially acceptable in this instance that a friendly bowling game isn't a cooperative thing like FF14, but minor details.

Now let's take a hypothetical. What if that weren't my approach to bowling? What if, instead, every time we bowled I went on a dramatic rant about the visibility of the scoreboard, and how my score is NOBODY's business? What if I constantly shot a stink eye at the bowling league over in the next lane, muttering about "elitism" anytime one of them grabbed a ball? What if, when I see someone use the gutter bumpers, I stood up, pointed, and with a smug air of superiority shouted, "CHEATER! Look someone's CHEATING! Their score doesn't COUNT because they didn't do it LEGITIMATELY. *I* don't use CHEATER things like that to get MY score."

If you see someone behaving like that, what would you assume is going on in their heads? Do you think, "wow, what a chill and well-adjusted person who just wants to enjoy a casual game?". Because I don't.

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what are you going on about here?

To me if you know the basic rotation for your job without knowing about optimizing ogcds and aligning buffs then thats what I believe the average playerbase goes by

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

To me if you know the basic rotation for your job without knowing about optimizing ogcds and aligning buffs then thats what I believe the average playerbase goes by

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I don't think most players actually know the basic rotation of their job, to be fair.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Any thoughts?

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What about filthy below average player like me?

Leveling Black Mages could need a extra lesson or two when it comes to working their rotations.

The first point imo strikes too broadly, considering different content demands a different level of gameplay. Most people do know how to play X job in dungeons—good enough to clear. But once you throw them into Extreme & above, many starts to falter from the pressure to keep their GCD running or cooldowns rolling at the face of Y amount of mechanics happening.

They could improve hall of novice; they could add a continuation to that series, or they could probably add something more in depth for each role but the fact that the game rarely demands you to do more than just have a pulse & breathing in casual content makes it hard to bridge that gap between the low end to even a midcore content.

I run strictly roulette and have seen it all. Tanks not using Defensives, Healers who only dps, DPS who constantly stand in stupid, players who afk most of a raid dungeon. You can educate the clueless and unaware but you cant fix the lazy give no effort players.
Player range:

Ultimate savage player
Savage/ex player
Average player
new player
Lazy and stupid player

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

With all the talk of Addons/Parsers, somebody today asked what my thoughts were on the average casual player actually knowing how to play their job correctly.

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This all depends on context. Are we talking about casual players in normal 8 and 24 person Raids? In dungeon or trial leveling instances? Are we talking about casual players at level 50? 70? 90? 15? Are we talking about that one player who your found infuriating in the level 50/60/70/80/90 queue last week?

How many other players have you been exposed to over the last year of playtime? 100? 1000? 10,000? None of those numbers begins to cover what might be average.

What do you consider your own level of play? Beginner? Leveling beginner? Intermediate? "Average"? Expert?

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This bought up a second question: What can the game do, to TEACH people to play properly.

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You know, a quick scan through these forums over the last 10 years would produce any number of deprecating-but-well-meaning-maybe players asking the same question over and over, complete with what I consider poorly thought-through suggestions.

I have never found an MMORPG that teaches players to play "properly", aside from tutorials at early levels.

There is a reason for this. Tutorials are fixed in time. Every job would require a set of tutorials for "Openers", as an example. Every time there is a new expansion, those tutorials would have to be rewritten. One only has to imagine learning a Heavensward Opener from a tutorial during Stormblood. Think about how useless that would be.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

This all depends on context. Are we talking about casual players in normal 8 and 24 person Raids? In dungeon or trial leveling instances? Are we talking about casual players at level 50? 70? 90? 15? Are we talking about that one player who your found infuriating in the level 50/60/70/80/90 queue last week?

How many other players have you been exposed to over the last year of playtime? 100? 1000? 10,000? None of those numbers begins to cover what might be average.

What do you consider your own level of play? Beginner? Leveling beginner? Intermediate? "Average"? Expert?



You know, a quick scan through these forums over the last 10 years would produce any number of deprecating-but-well-meaning-maybe players asking the same question over and over, complete with what I consider poorly thought-through suggestions.

I have never found an MMORPG that teaches players to play "properly", aside from tutorials at early levels.

There is a reason for this. Tutorials are fixed in time. Every job would require a set of tutorials for "Openers", as an example. Every time there is a new expansion, those tutorials would have to be rewritten. One only has to imagine learning a Heavensward Opener from a tutorial during Stormblood. Think about how useless that would be.

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Thats a valid point but I think the bigger reason why class tutorials are slim is to drive players to communicate and learn from each other due to it being a social MMO

What FFXIV needs is Maat challenges in order to progress past a certain level - those were some hardcore roadblocks for some back in the day >.> (I kid, I kid - things like that would never fly in 14) ^^ However, something like that would be a kind of litmus test to make sure people knew the basics of their job and thus ensure a modicum of expertise, at least.

For those who don't know, in order to be able to level cap in FFXI, you had to farm testimonies in order to fight Maat, an NPC. He played as your own job and also had your 1 hour (biggest skill). You also were not allowed a sub job so were at a bit of disadvantage. However, if you saw people at 75 you knew they beat Maat and had at least a good handle on the job they beat him at.

Anyone who plays through 1 to 90 on a specific job they main is at least going to be decent. Thats why I always recommend newbies to main one class before juggling multiple classes at the same time. They should only drop a class if they dont like it to pick another to main.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Just a question that came up today.

With all the talk of Addons/Parsers, somebody today asked what my thoughts were on the average casual player actually knowing how to play their job correctly.

Immediately i said no, the average player most likely does not realize that they are holding back groups by playing badly.

This is just based on experience in Dungeons/PF, but some people are completely clueless when it comes to actually PLAYING the game..

This bought up a second question: What can the game do, to TEACH people to play properly.

Should the game teach people about Melding Gear, Rotations, Openers and other things that will help them in the Endgame?

Any thoughts?

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I'll bite.

As others have said, yes, the majority of players know how to play the game, and in the five years I've been playing it, I've only encountered maybe a handful of bad players, which I would define as not playing their role at all. And it's usually in low level dungeons.

I want to emphasize how I define "bad players". Again, it is someone not playing the role they've queued up as. Like healers who are curebots and not doing anything else. No regens, no cleanses, no DPSing, nada. Or tanks not really tanking, DPS only spamming one skill, etc.

I don't define bad players as people who make mistakes. Because those are called human beings. And this sort of thing happens a lot to humans. If it's a normal dungeon which is designed for - as the OP put it - average casual players, then someone messing up may add a grand total of five minutes to your dungeon run. This also includes tanks who single pull. I know that's just egregious in this day and age.

Second, regardless of what the game may teach new players, it is largely irrelevant and moot by the time they get to high level dungeons or endgame because everyone is at max ilevel gear and stuff dies so fast. BLMs have a fairly long ramp-up time before they start unleashing serious damage. A fresh 90 BLM won't have time to do all their setup stuff before the mobs are halfway dead, and the BLM is sitting at 4 on the aggro chart, which makes them look bad. It can be deceiving.

So, no, the game can't really do anything different. Some players will be really good, some will be really bad, and the vast majority will be somewhere in between. That's why it's called the average.

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Originally Posted by MirielleLavandre

What FFXIV needs is Maat challenges in order to progress past a certain level

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Poor RDMs.

I run pretty much most of the Duty Roulettes daily.

I'd say it's 60/40. 60% have a decent idea of what they're doing and 40% just simply don't. Healers who think everyone has to be 100% at all times, tanks who don't know what a mitigation is (or that Arm's Length is a Dungeon Defensive CD), DPS who don't know what AoE is. When I heal, I frequently out aggro the DPS despite mostly doing DPS.

The higher end players just simply don't do roulettes much, they have no reason to.

• Hall of the intermediate needs to be implemented ASAP (basic rotations, tank mitigation practice etc, a fight where a healer has to heal and kill things at the same time), Hall of the Expert needs implemented at some point (Similar to Stone Sea Skye a legitimate DPS check).
• SSS needs to be mandatory to enter every Extreme to include ARR. If you can't pass the DPS check on a stationary target, there's no way possible you're going to be able to do it with mechanics flying around.
• Basic jobs need to be removed from every weapon after level 35.

Simple answer:
No, no they do not. The game really needs to double down on forcing them to learn before they come and subject the rest of us to their existence.

I would say most of us play alright, well enough that my expert and 90 roulettes don't take more than 15 minutes per. Are we all playing at the bleeding edge with competitive numbers against those that are running spreadsheets to max out sub stats and get maybe one extra oGCD in per run, no. The thing is, especially with FFlogs, is if everyone was playing optimally and every player was miraculously within 100 DPS of each other, someone would still be in the bottom and still be a grey parse.

We are almost at Level 100 and the content is roughly as difficult as Level 50. One hundred levels of tutorial. People don't get better unless they have a reason to.

https://i.ibb.co/6B3twyF/meh.jpg

My paint skills are elementary. However the average is green/blue IMO

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Originally Posted by Renalt

https://i.ibb.co/6B3twyF/meh.jpg

My paint skills are elementary. However the average is green/blue IMO

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is that really your experience? it certainly isnt mine. grey and especially red would be much bigger

in random content, not tslking about extremes and savages

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Originally Posted by Asari5

is that really your experience? it certainly isnt mine. grey and especially red would be much bigger

in random content, not tslking about extremes and savages

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Well. Yeah. That is my experience. Yeah I come across some brain dead people but those are few and far in between. MOST my dungeon/trial/Alliance raids ( even outside the CT set ) usually go on with NO issues.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

https://i.ibb.co/6B3twyF/meh.jpg

My paint skills are elementary. However the average is green/blue IMO

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I'd say red is the average at best. Anything past red is above average, in my experience.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

Well. Yeah. That is my experience. Yeah I come across some brain dead people but those are few and far in between. MOST my dungeon/trial/Alliance raids ( even outside the CT set ) usually go on with NO issues.

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That's because the content is dumbed down mostly. You can get by with a lot in most content nowadays, and it can effectively be brute forced, or by some carrying the others.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

https://i.ibb.co/6B3twyF/meh.jpg

My paint skills are elementary. However the average is green/blue IMO

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A picture worth thousand words.

On my end, the reds & greens are the largest. Reds should be about the same size as greens too.

Yikes. I'm sorry people have had a lot of issues with others. I guess I've been lucky cause there has been only ONE instance where people just bailed from continued failure and that was the Bird and Portal trial. I stayed with the group cause I knew there was a 1st timer and I wanted them to be able to clear but unfortunately I was a DPS and not a healer and the healers kept biting it.

Most of the time if we wipe...it's just the once. Rarely twice.

As SturmChrro said...it IS stupidly easy. I've been lucky to be grouped with randoms that could handle it without a single word being exchanged.

No they do not, most play FFXIV for the social aspect and treat this like second life.

I would love for the devs to "enforce" better playstyles but only way I can see that happening is making normal content harder which doesn't work and just promotes leeching (Which we already have now) or players just outright dropping certain content.